“Doesn’t talk much. Some things come up.”
He has started using the pay phone outside the motel to call his client, just in case the phone in his room isn’t secure. Not that he thinks anyone has him bugged, but he has to assume the front desk has records of the numbers he calls, even if it’s billed to his calling card. It costs too much to use the mobile and that’s what a straight shooter he is, has always been. He doesn’t run up costs no matter how deep the client’s pockets. He is ethical, he reminds himself, under the red hood that shields the pay phone from the elements. It’s not a full-on phone booth, but it provides all the privacy he needs. There’s nothing weird about being a guy who uses a public phone, right?
Monday. He has the night off. She doesn’t. He tries to ignore the feeling that is demanding to be heard, this feeling that he can’t wait until her shift ends. He no longer walks her home, of course, and she doesn’t let him come over every night. He pretends that’s mutual, that they both want a little space. They have devised a system, their own one if by land, two if by sea. If they’re working the same shift, she passes a fake check to him—Adam and Eve on a raft, whiskey down. That means come over. He told her to use that because no one in this place ever orders poached eggs with rye toast.
No fake check, no visit, no explanation. It pains him to admit how much he yearns to see that rectangle of lined green paper being clipped and rotated toward him. The words are just old-fashioned diner slang, innocuous should anyone else see it. Adam and Eve on a raft, whiskey down. Never has the thought of two poached eggs on rye toast excited him more.
On Mondays, when there’s no dinner service at the High-Ho, she takes a smoke break as close to six on the dot as possible if she wants to see him. Standing here at the phone booth, the sun still hot, Adam misses a few things his client is yammering because he’s waiting to see if she’s going to come out. 6 p.m., 6:01, 6:02—it’s not always exact because she has to have someone cover for her.
At 6:03, she walks out, and it scares him how glad this makes him.
“I hear you,” he says to his client, having heard nothing for the past three minutes.
Five hours later, 11 p.m., he approaches her apartment. Belleville is the kind of town where what few sidewalks they have would be rolled up by eleven or so. He never sees anyone, not even a lone insomniac walking a dog. So he has to assume no one sees him.
They have already agreed that she will leave her entry door, the downstairs one, ajar; her actual door is always unlocked. Only in a town like this would he allow such an arrangement. Besides, he likes that she’s in bed when he gets there. With the exception of the quilt, folded over the footboard of the bed, the linens are all white and she makes him think of a flame, with her long pale peachy body, the red hair at top, the piercing blue eyes. He used to prefer women with a little froufrou and airs. Lingerie, heels, garters. She doesn’t go for that. She likes to be naked and not just because of the warm nights, when even the breezes and her window fan can’t do much but push the hot air around. “I think it’s silly,” she says, “putting on stuff only to take it off.”
He thinks he understands. She wants him to believe that she’s naked, transparent. What you see is what you get. She is so clearly the opposite. He still can’t quite believe she’s done what his client says. But she’s done it before, no? Left another man, another kid, in the lurch, then stole money from the kid when the guy died, disappeared with the life insurance. Hers, free and clear, but a shitty thing to do. “She’s capable of anything,” his client has warned him. Adam doesn’t think that’s quite true. Like most people, she’s rationalized her poor decisions, come up with a reason that she feels entitled to cut and run, treated herself to a bonus on her way out the door. It would be okay if she just ripped the guys off. But there are kids in the mix, too. Is she pulling the same scam again? How will that work, given that her husband knows where she is? Could she really have blown through all the money she stole the first time?
But if she blew it all, what did she blow it on? And if she’s got her new jackpot stashed somewhere around here, what’s keeping her from trying to claim it? What is she waiting for?
Her eyes flutter when he heaves his body into her bed and the mattress shifts beneath them. But she doesn’t say a word, simply opens her arms, her mouth, herself to him.
*
The next day at work, Mr. C tells them the bar has to close for one day for an exterminator’s visit. “Routine,” he adds quickly. “State law. No big deal.” Everybody gets Wednesday off.
“Off” as in: you don’t get paid. Adam can afford it, but he notices her face falls a little. Wednesday is Polly’s night to work the big room on her own, her best tip night.
But all she says is, “Want to go to Baltimore?”
“D.C. is a better place to spend a day,” he counters, curious to see what she’ll reply.
“I got business in Baltimore. It won’t take long.”
Bingo.
She’s not a chatty woman, that’s part of her charm, but she seems unusually quiet even for her, especially as they cross the Bay Bridge Wednesday morning.
“You scared of the bridge?”
She shakes her head, unconvincingly. “Not really. Although, one time, I did that bridge walk, the one in the spring. A shuttle bus takes you to the eastern side and you walk back to Sandy Point. When you do that, you realize how high up it is. And it moves, the bridge. Sways like a hammock. Now I can feel it, every time.”
Her sentences are landing like questions. Not usually her style. Something about crossing the bay seems to have made her tentative, less herself. Returning to the scene of the crime?
“Of course it moves. It’s a suspension bridge. If it didn’t have some give, it would collapse.”
She gives him an impatient look as if that’s some masculine spoilsport bullshit. She doesn’t talk again until they’re on the Beltway, about fifteen minutes out from downtown. With her, it’s hard to tell if she’s miffed or being her usual silent self.
“Drop me off at the Hyatt,” she says.
“I thought we were spending the day together.”
“I got this one thing I need to do,” she says. “I told you. Then I’ll meet you for a late lunch in Fells Point. Where you wanna go? John Steven’s? Bertha’s?”
“John Steven’s is fine,” he says. “But where—”
“It’s a family thing,” she says. “I gotta do it alone. It’s no big deal—but I have to be alone.”
He thinks, but doesn’t say, You told Gregg you don’t have any family. His client told him the same thing. Parents dead, not in touch with any blood relatives, no friends.
He drops her at the Hyatt, watches in the rearview as she gets into the line for a cab. His truck is too noticeable. He can’t follow her in this. But he makes note of the cab’s number, watches it head north, and figures he has a chance of catching it, given the slow-as-syrup traffic. He swoops into the driveway, hands his truck over to the valet, hops into another cab and promises a $50 bonus if the driver can find cab number 1214. It’s on his client’s tab, after all.
Four blocks up Calvert Street, they spot 1214.
“Hang back,” he says. “Don’t get too close.”
“You a spy?” the guy laughs. He’s in his sixties, a big-boned African American man, the kind of guy who seems to find all white people mildly ridiculous. He’s right, Adam has to admit, although not about Adam, of course.
“Following my wife,” he says.